The introduction of a public safety answering point (PSAP) system has greatly assisted providers of emergency services such as fire, police, and rescue departments. Briefly described, a local switching system receives a call from a calling party requiring emergency assistance and transmits the telephone number of the calling party to the PSAP system. In response, the PSAP system accesses an automatic location identification (ALI) database containing information associated with the calling telephone number and obtains the name and billing address of the calling telephone user from the ALI database. As can be appreciated, the address information may be very important since the calling party may be in a state of panic and is often incapable of supplying the location information to an emergency service operator in a timely manner. Thus, the address information obtained by the PSAP system allows the emergency service provider to more quickly respond to the emergency situation.
The ALI database is typically maintained by the local exchange carrier (LEC). Often, however, the ALI database cannot provide the necessary information for those telephones that are not controlled by the local exchange carrier. For example, the ALI database does not carry any information for private branch exchange (PBX) telephones and wireless telephones such as cellular telephones.
It is therefore desirable to provide a system and method for providing the necessary data requested by the PSAP system using an alternate information source other than the ALI database maintained by the local exchange carrier. It is also desirable to provide such a system and method with little or no modification to the existing PSAP system to provide a cost effective solution. The present invention provides these and other advantages, as will be illustrated by the following description and accompanying figures. In the figures, like reference numerals indicate similar components.